Cleaning up our food supply: SMUdent-led company wants to make a difference

Written by Dan Curwin 

Photo by Clean Catch Baits (Facebook Page)

In a world of changing appetites, Clean Catch Baits is trying to make sure that the process of catching fish is as sustainable as possible.

Diets around the world are changing, and consumers are increasingly demanding that their food be ethically sourced. Seventy percent of the world population, largely driven by millenials, is either reducing meat consumption or leaving meat off the table altogether. The fisheries and aquaculture sector saw total production, trade and consumption reach an all-time record in 2018, according to the Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations. 

Recent research in Atlantic Canada has shown that fishing gear is a major source of microplastics in our oceans. Microplastics are the miniscule plastic fragments that fall off of decomposing plastics products like fishing lures. Scientists have found microplastics particles in 12% of freshwater fish in the United States. To address the challenge of microplastics in fishing gear, Clean Catch Baits is selling biodegradable, recreational fishing lures of various shapes, colours, patterns, and sizes. Its goal is to provide a quality sustainable alternative solution to single use, plastic based fishing lures that often end up in waterways – shedding microplastics into rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans along the way.

Photo by Clean Catch Baits

Founded by three Saint Mary’s University students, the company currently consists of President & CEO Guillermo Villarreal De Lara, Chief Financial Officer Robel Berhane, and Operations Manager Katherine vanZutphen. Villarreal De Lara and vanZutphen have just recently completed their degrees, while Berhane is still completing his undergraduate degree. 

The inspiration for Clean Catch Baits came when Villarreal De Lara, who was a competitive sport fisherman in northern Mexico before moving to Halifax, began telling his Saint Mary’s classmates, who are now his co-founders, about his love of fishing and his concern about its impact on the environment. Fishing lures are often lost or thrown into the water when damaged, and cumulatively this can have a very large effect. In an interview, he remembers that “disposing of the bait the way you should be, [is] something we don’t think about.”

Villarreal then began researching natural substances that could be used to make lures and began making lures, and soon two of his classmates joined him in his endeavour.

In September, the company won the inaugural Atlantic Canada 2020 AquaHacking Challenge, a start-up competition designed to support businesses developing technology aimed at addressing environmental problems related to water. Clean Catch Baits was one of nearly 30 Atlantic Canadian teams in the competition, and came away with $20,000 as the first prize and an additional $1,000 for the Viewer’s Choice Award. The AquaHacking win builds on previous success, the company was a finalist for the Innovacorp Blue-Green Challenge 2019 where it was awarded $5,000.

Operations Manager Katherine vanZutphen says the company hopes to sell its lures to customers in the spring and  is “looking to start lab testing in January before we go into final production.” She says that the company is looking to ensure that it is being sustainable not only in the materials that it uses in its lures, but also in the manufacturing and shipping processes as well.

More than 3 million adults in Canada and nearly 50 million in the United States are active recreational anglers, representing a sizable market for the company. Though fishing remains popular, this popularity leads to millions of artificial lures polluting waterways every year.

The company has completed a round of product testing and has interest from retailers across the country to sell the product. To get opinions from experienced users, Clean Catch engaged with over 100 anglers in Canada, the United States, and Mexico to test their products and give feedback. The customer discovery survey “helped us understand the market a bit more and shape how we’ve developed our baits,” CFO Robel Berhane said in an interview.

Clean Catch Baits is the latest in a long line of successful companies to be founded by students in SMU’s long-running entrepreneurship program which now offers majors and minors in entrepreneurship in the commerce (undergraduate and graduate), arts (undergraduate), and science (undergraduate) faculties.

Dr. Ellen Farrall from the Sobey School of Business says Saint Mary’s takes an “inside-out approach” to teaching entrepreneurship and venture capital, and over the past 25 years now Canada’s most comprehensive venture capital program and one of the largest entrepreneurship programs. The program allows students to learn from startup companies and venture capitalists while launching their own companies. Through her years at SMU, Farrell has seen the types of businesses students and alumni have changed from daycares, restaurants, and bars to a much broader range of companies in  software, cannabis, and cleantech.

Clean Catch Bait’s recreational lures will be available to anglers in the spring of 2021 and the company plans to start developing products for commercial fisheries in the near future.